


we've only got this hundred years

by stiction



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse of time powers, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, First Time, Recreational Drug Use, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:56:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Damn, Caulfield.” Chloe threads one hand through her hair, fingernails blunt and scraping. “That’s pretty gay.” </p><p>"You’re pretty gay,” Max snorts, but it loses its bite when she’s breathless and palming at Chloe’s hip where her pants ride down and the heavy band of her boxers is visible. </p><p>(Or, five times Max rewound time to preserve the sanctity of friendship, and one time she didn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we've only got this hundred years

5.

When they’re in the car Monday afternoon, when Max is feeling raw with panic and confusion, talking to Chloe feels like swallowing tacks.

“Don’t you think I’m happy to see you?” she tries, her insides churning.

“No,” Chloe snaps. “You were happy to wait five years without a call, or even a text.”

“I’m sorry,” Max says, and she’s stuck on the last day, on the night before her parents packaged up her entire life and shipped it off to Seattle in a moving van. “I know things were tough on you when I left.”

“How do you know? You weren’t even _here_.” On the steering wheel Chloe’s hands are tense, knuckles white under her thin skin. In the sunset her eyes are glinting orange and her brow is tight with anger and Max can’t stop looking.

She tries for lighthearted to match her lightheadedness. “I didn’t order my parents to move specifically to fuck you over, Chloe.”

“You’ve been at Blackwell for over a month without letting me know,” Chloe says, rolling her eyes. “Enough said.”

“I just-” Max starts. And stops. “I kept thinking about the last night before I left.”

Chloe goes still.

“You remember, right?” Max leans across the seat, puts a hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “When we-”

“Stop it,” Chloe barks, throwing the hand off with enough force to jerk the steering wheel towards the ditch. “Shit-”

Max’s hands fly up to shield her face, just in case it doesn’t work this time and--

“-out letting me know,” Chloe says, rolling her eyes. The truck is on the road. “Enough said." **  
**

Her breath comes out shaky, weak. Max pushes the memory down. They promised not to tell anyone, and she supposes that includes each other, five years later.

“I just wanted to settle in first,” she says instead, her hands fisting in her pockets. “To not be such a shy, cliché geek.”

Chloe’s eyes stay on the road, and Max’s thoughts stay on her promise.

 

4.

Chloe eats like a wolf at the Two Whales Diner.

It should be comforting, Max tells herself--her mom has a picture of the two of them at a ninth birthday party, her own face shiny clean and Chloe’s smeared with icing and crumbs of chocolate cake like ants. Chloe has always eaten messy, dived deep, jumped in every puddle and slung mud on the playground.

Max picks at her waffle, fork heavy in her hand. The syrup makes her mouth sticky so she can’t stop licking her lips, watching Chloe burn through four strips of bacon, mopping up egg yolk and never quite opening her mouth wide enough to fit the whole bite in. There’s a streak of yellow yolk at the corner of her lip. Max wants to rub it off.

The feeling congeals in her stomach with the weight of unsettlement that appeared yesterday. There are apologies pushing at the backs of her teeth; one for not finding Chloe when she came back, another for the scene in the parking lot, a third for being an unwanted guest.

She swallows them, forces another bite of waffles into her mouth and chews without tasting.

Chloe’s moved on to the slice of pie her mother snuck out of the kitchen for her. It doesn’t look like she notices Max staring, but that’s no guarantee. Ten year old Chloe was bold and loud, could run longer and climb higher, but that’s changed, and Max can’t pin down eighteen year old Chloe aside from lean, from wiry, sly--and fierce.

Her gaze must carry some weight, because finally Chloe looks up, meets her eyes. Max thinks about rewinding, if only to keep her cool. To make sure Chloe didn’t notice.

Max’s heart thumps when Chloe grins. The line of her gums and teeth is stained red with sweet cherry syrup. A chunk of fruit is stuck in the tines of her fork, torn like meat.

“So! These powers,” Chloe says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Max jumps, shifts, can’t get her mind off those teeth, red like they were fresh from tearing out throats. “You could do some crazy shit with that."

“Not really.” Max shakes her head, stabs her waffle with her fork to stop thinking about Chloe’s mouth. “Kind of a responsibility thing, I guess. With great power, and all that.”

“Ugh, nerd.” A balled up napkin hits Max square on the forehead, and she looks up to see Chloe’s eyes flash dangerous as she leans in close. “Like you would never use this to get away with something. You could totally make a move on me, and I’d never know.”

“What?” Max jolts upright in her seat. She can feel her breakfast heavy in her stomach as Chloe laughs without smiling, leans back and throws an arm up on the back of her seat.

“Come on, Maxi Pad,” Chloe scoffs. Her tongue traces the edges of her teeth. “I’m only school stupid, not life stupid. You’ve been staring at me since I got here.”

Max’s stomach flips, tightens. There’s a sudden rush of blood and anger to her head.

“I’ve been staring at you,” Max says, feeling for this single moment bold and hard and tough, “Because I can’t tell if I want to slap you or make out with you.”

A split second moment to relish the aftermath--Chloe’s face lights up with shock like a squirrel on a power line, mouth open. Max can feel her cheeks burn.

She rewinds. The flow of blood out of her face is tangible. Disconcerting.

“So! These powers,” Chloe says, as she eats like a wolf at the Two Whales Diner, and this time Max laughs it off.

 

3.

“Raw and rough,” Max says, the first thing she can think of when she sees the junkyard. It sounds stupid as soon as she says it.

Chloe doesn’t grin this time, but there’s an shoes-up dragging sweep of her eyes that makes Max shiver even as she moves into a patch of sunlight. There’s something in the look she can’t pin down, something in the way Chloe talks to her that she hasn’t been able to put a word to all day. It prickles under her skin like the sky is about to fall, like the vortex is overhead again.

“Find me five bottles, Max,” Chloe says over her shoulder, her hands running over the barrel of the gun like it’s made of glass. “I’ll set up the shooting gallery.”

And Max hesitates, but--”Pretty please?” Chloe tacks on with a pout.

Max is weak. Chloe’s breath reeks of beer and her slump-shouldered posture says bad decisions are on the rise, but put those eyes and that pout together and Max is sold.

She mulls over a lot, clambering over metal that shrieks under her feet. Whoever rode on the rusted-out school bus, the doe skirting her progress, even how the bottles just out of her reach got there without breaking. She has to rewind a lot, short jumps that chip away at her energy, and at first she thinks that that’s what’s making her so agitated.

But it isn’t until Max finds the hideaway, the friendship bracelets and graffiti that she puts a hand to the knot in her stomach and knows she’s jealous.

This isn’t Chloe’s lair.

It’s Rachel Amber’s lair, too.

Max is outside, Max is the privileged intruder, Max is allowed to cross the border but expected to leave once she’s overstayed her welcome.

She licks her lips; in the corners of her mouth she can still taste maple syrup, sweat lingering from when she clambered up and down the stacks of burnt-out cars and other junk. There’s a permanent marker rolling around underfoot, so she grabs it, uncaps it with her teeth.

MAX WAS HERE.

It’s almost twice as big as the other tags, and almost immediately, Max feels her cheeks go red with shame.

She leaves the doorless shack with her graffiti erased, thinking to herself, _pretty please_.

Thinking, _that could have been me and Chloe_.

 

2.

In the end, Max doesn’t say anything.

She’s had only three days with this, three days with the new way Chloe smiles burning under her skin like a match to tinder. The day after tomorrow, while the sun sets, the tornado will come.

They’re just laying there on Chloe’s bed, the sunlight streaming in through the flag over her window so that Chloe’s face is striped red and white. Max can’t stop looking at it.

“Do I have something on my face?” Chloe asks eventually. Her eyes are still closed, and Max’s heart stops.

“No,” she manages.

“No?” Chloe turns her head to the side, opens her eyes. They’re so close together, and Chloe’s face looks as unguarded as Max has seen it in years. She’s not wearing any makeup, and Max can see that her eyelashes are short, pale, sparse against her cheeks when she blinks.

“When did you get so pretty?”

The words fall out of Max’s mouth like loose teeth, painful as they move past her lips, but she lets them go, lets them roll across the short distance between their faces. She remembers the diner, feels a little sick. She shouldn’t have let Chloe talk her into smoking; she just wanted to see Chloe’s lips wrapped around something so she could make her smile, see that twist of her mouth when she laughed. She just wanted to forget about the tornado. About Kate. Just for a while.

Chloe tried to teach her to blow smoke rings but she was hopeless, kept laughing on the exhale until Chloe grabbed her around the waist and dragged her down to the bedspread.

“Just look at the ceiling,” Chloe said. “This is your first time, right?”

And now Max’s mouth feels sore, saying things like that, and Chloe’s lips aren’t wrapped around anything, they’re slack in the red and white light of her room.

She doesn’t answer, and Max chases her own question, props herself up on one elbow and leans through the inches separating them. Chloe sighs when their mouths meet, puts her hands on Max’s hips and lets Max lie half on top of her.

“Was waiting for that,” she says when Max stops to breathe. Her smile is more of a smirk if Max had to categorize, and-

“Hold on,” Max says, “Hold on.”

She scrambles to the side of the bed to dig her camera out of her bag.

“Nooo,” Chloe groans when she sees the flash of the lens, but she’s smiling and she doesn’t move from where she is. Max gets the shot lined up perfect, Chloe’s shirt rumpled up so her navel shows, her arm bent, hand behind her head while the other one reaches out towards Max. “Get back over here.”

Max goes, and Chloe pulls her in close, her arms warm with stillness and the heat she lets seep through the kiss. She doesn’t argue when Chloe pulls her shirt off over her head, only pushes at the hem of Chloe’s until it’s up past her sports bra and she can tug the elastic down to mouth at her chest.

“Damn, Caulfield.” Chloe threads one hand through her hair, fingernails blunt and scraping. “That’s pretty gay.”

That has Max laughing into the spit-wet curve of one of Chloe’s breasts, turning to suck a bruise into the swell of the other. “You’re pretty gay,” she retorts, but it loses its bite when she’s breathless and palming at Chloe’s hip where her pants ride down and the heavy band of her boxers is visible.

Chloe’s bedroom door swings open, her stepfather stomping in halfway through a threat, and Max’s blood runs cold.

She shuts her eyes tight, rewinds until her vision blurs and blood trickles down over her lips.

“Damn, Caulfield.” Chloe reaches across the front seat of the truck and puts a hand at the back of Max’s neck, shoving a handful of napkins towards her. It’s only one in the afternoon. She’s lost five hours. “That’s pretty fucked up."

 

1.

On Friday, Max can hardly walk straight.

Her head is pounding when she sits up in bed, the pressure so heavy she doesn’t even consider rewinding the night to get more sleep. She turns the ringer on her phone to vibrate; Warren’s been texting her all week, and she hasn’t read a single message.

When she shuffles down to the shower, strips her shirt off over her head, she can almost feel Chloe’s hands on the small of her back.

“It didn’t happen,” she murmurs, pressing her face to the cool tile wall of the shower. She turns the spray on, cold at first to shock her awake and then warmer, bit by bit. “It didn’t happen,” she repeats, a little louder.

“God, shut _up_ , Coachella bait.” Someone smacks the shower curtain from the outside, but Max is already leaning against the wall, hot water running down her chest and her hand between her legs. Victoria’s friends laugh. “Guess you have to talk to yourself when nobody’s ever heard of you.”

“It didn’t happen,” she whispers, and bites down on the inside of her cheek, tasting Chloe.

Max leaves the shower half an hour later, the aching in her brain a little softer, but her mind stuck in the rut of the way Chloe’s bare stomach feels.

Warren texts her twice in five minutes while she’s getting dressed, and when she finally caves, she finds a flood of texts that get more and more urgent from last night to now, judging by the exponentially rising use of exclamation points.

The last three:

“ _Max. Prescott is asking if people have seen you_.”

“ _Mad Max. Come on! Nathan Prescott is checking classrooms to find you. Telling teachers you’re working on a project together to find out class times. Idk if anyone believes him_.”

“ _PRESCOTT CONFIRMED FOR HUNTING YOU DOWN AND TAKING YOUR HEAD AS A TROPHY!!!_ ”

Her heart beats in her throat. She can’t miss class. She also can’t get murdered. There are a lot of ways in which getting murdered would fuck up her life plans almost as much as missing class would.

Max makes it in through a side door. It feels ridiculous to be checking around corners like this, like she’s in her own personal spy movie when she’s just at school, but seeing your best friend get killed in the girl’s bathroom changes your perspective on safe zones.

“ _Coast looks clear for now_ ,” she texts to Warren. “ _No sign of Prescott_.”

“ _Yeha_ ,” he responds a minute later. “ _Thats cause he jstu finishd breaking my nose. At the nurses now_.”

A twinge of guilt hits her, just before she looks up to see Nathan Prescott at the far end of the hallway. He’s turned to the side, though--he doesn’t see her. Max backs up slowly, tilts her head so that she can keep an eye on him as she slides towards the wall, feeling with a blind hand for a door, any door.

Until one opens.

Someone pulls her into sudden darkness, one hand over her mouth so she can’t scream.

“Don’t kick me, Caulfield,” Chloe hisses. “We’re both about to be dead here, and I know you don’t want to die a virgin.”

“What the shit are you doing here?” Max whispers, feeling in the dark until her hands touch Chloe’s face.

“Saving your ass, obviously. Now be quiet, Prescott’s still hanging around.”

Max breathes through her nose and carefully maps out Chloe’s eyebrows and nose, moving down to her lips and her chin. Her pulse is pounding in her neck, the pressure in her forehead back. It feels like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff, about to fall, about to be pushed off or--

“Can you cut the Helen Keller shit out?” Chloe murmurs, her voice closer than Max expected. “Just chill. I heard Prescott walk away. We can hang out here for a minute to make sure he’s gone, then make a break for it.”

“Chill,” Max says. “Got it.”

Without her blood rushing in her ears, Max can focus on the present. And, apparently, the lack of moving room in this closet. Her back is pressed up against a shelf of what feels like paper towel rolls, and her knees are bumping up against Chloe’s. Her hands are still on Chloe’s cheeks.

Chill.

“...Do you think this is long enough?” she asks the darkness. There’s a sliver of light at their feet, but not much else to go on.

“Yeah,” Chloe breathes.

The doorknob rattles.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Max asks, one hand on Chloe’s shoulder while the other fiddles with a loose thread on her bag.

“It’s locked,” Chloe whispers.

“It’s locked,” Max repeats. “It’s... it’s locked?”

“Yep.”

“What do we do?”

She can feel Chloe shrug, then look around like she can magically see now.

“I guess we just make ourselves comfortable and wait for someone to open the door?” Chloe whispers. “Unless you have some sick door-opening skills.”

There’s some rustling when Chloe shifts, a worrying squeal of metal, and suddenly Chloe’s chest is pressed against hers, cheeks smushed together.

“Ow, shit, fuck, Jesus _Christmas_ ,” Chloe yelps. Max can feel her pushing against the shelf behind her with both hands, but she can’t budge it. She shifts, and her legs slot neatly between Max’s, right. Right up in there.

Max wants to put her face in her hands, but her arms are pinned to her sides.

“The shelf fell. I think I can push it back,” mutters Chloe. “Just give me a second.”

She shifts for balance, her thigh warm in shredded jeans and rubbing against Max’s inseam, and. Max tries to swallow the whimper that slips out when Chloe props her foot up on the lowest level of the shelf and pushes.

Everything goes silent and still. She tries to rewind, but her hands are stuck and her legs are shaking and she probably shouldn’t have gotten off in the shower this morning because her entire body is lit up.

“Caulfield?” Chloe says. “Max?”

“Yes?” Max squeaks.

“Are you getting off on this?”

Max raises her hand as much as she can. Nada.

“No?” she offers, clenching and opening her hand a few times.

“Yeah,” Chloe says. “That’s what I thought.”

Her breath on Max’s neck feels a lot more deliberate when it’s followed by the barest touch of her lips in the instant before Max’s hand slips free and time slides backwards.

This time, when Chloe drags her into the supply closet, Max makes sure to stick her foot in the door so it can’t close all the way.

 

+1.

Max watches the clock turn Friday night into Saturday morning, the little blinking numbers moving from 11:59 to 12:00,

She waits for relief to sink in. Her clothes are wet and clinging to her skin like grasping hands. She can’t shake the memory of tumbling underwater with no idea what way is up.

“We won,” Chloe says from behind her, and she jumps. She thought Chloe was asleep. “You can sleep now.”

Max squeezes her eyes shut, curls into a tighter ball. She doesn’t want Chloe to see her cry, doesn’t want to talk about it when she has no idea what she would even say. It feels like she was ripped out of the water and wrung out hard, left to air dry in a hurricane. Her eyes sting.

“Hey.”

Chloe shifts in bed behind her, lays a hand on her bare arm. It's scalding hot; Max’s mouth falls open but she clamps it shut before a sob can make it out.

“Jesus, Max, you’re freezing,” Chloe says, sitting up straight. Her hand is still burning a hole through Max’s arm, and it’s getting harder and harder to not cry when all she wants is for Chloe to hold her tight and convince her that this is real.

That she didn’t just swap her nightmare for a dream.

“Come on,” Chloe’s saying, Chloe’s pulling at her shoulders to prop her up and leaving the bed to rifle through Max’s closet. “You need some dry clothes, okay?”

Max nods. She’s looking at her feet. In the moonlight they’re pale and bluish, too long for her height. There’s sand stuck in between her toes, a thin strand of algae clinging to her ankle.

“Christ, Caulfield, do you have anything that isn’t from Target or Goodwill?” Chloe is back in front of her, crouching to get into her field of vision. “Talk to me, Max. Can you feel your fingers? Do we have to amputate?”

She cracks a smile at that, and Max is so close to losing it. She feels the first tremble of her lip and knows that it’s all over even before the thick haze of tears in her eyes spills out down her cheeks without her permission.

“Hey, hey,” murmurs Chloe, sober again. “We won, okay? You saved this piece of shit town.”

Her hair and face blur in Max’s vision, but she’s leaning in close to wrap her arms around Max’s shoulders. Max’s hands are shaking hard when she tries to put them on Chloe’s back.

“You’re--you’re really warm,” Max croaks, burying her face in Chloe’s shoulder.

“Max, Antarctica would be warm to you right now. Shove off,” she mumbles, and the tone is tempered by the way she cups Max’s cheek in her palm, rubs gentle with a thumb. “Come on, I’ve got some owl-print sleep shorts with your name on ‘em.”

Chloe helps her stand and peels the damp t-shirt off over her head. In between crying and shaking Max can feel her heart fluttering in her throat; she’s thinking of her mouth on Chloe’s chest, Chloe’s hot thigh between her legs, and the spark under her skin is flaring up again despite the chill.

“You should--” Chloe starts, then coughs a little like she, too, had swallowed seawater. “You should probably take your bra off, too.”

“Okay,” Max answers. She fumbles with the catch, her arms so sore it feels like torture to reach behind herself like that. It comes undone on her second try, and she goes still when she glances up to meet Chloe’s eyes.

Chloe’s looking dead at her, not the ground or the ceiling or the view from the window. She’s quiet now, her face open like it was in her room on Wednesday. This time she’s cast in blues and shadow, in the refracted light from the lamp in the courtyard.

Max feels her feet on the ground, and lets the straps slide down her arms until her bra is on the floor. The urge to cover herself is strong, but she doesn’t look away from Chloe, doesn’t spook when Chloe steps forward into her space.

“You feel it, too?” Chloe asks. Her hands are so warm that Max can already feel them in the half-second where they hover over her hips before touching. They’re close--the zipper on Chloe’s sweatshirt brushes against Max’s stomach, sends a new chill down through her core.

Max nods, her mouth dry. She doesn’t mention Wednesday’s sun-drenched kissing, lazy on Chloe’s comforter and the slow hum under her skin, and she doesn’t mention Friday, the hot press of Chloe against her in the supply closet, and she doesn’t mention five years ago, their pinky-sworn promise in the dark of the last night. “Yeah.”

Chloe leans in to kiss her then, chapped lips catching against where the cut on Max’s mouth is just beginning to scab. Her hands are soothing warmth against the deep ache in Max’s skin. She’s burning in from outside, burning out from inside, and maybe eventually the two fires will meet and leave her warm at last. Chloe’s sweatshirt is just rough enough against her bare skin to feel good, pressing dry against her breasts until Chloe’s hands nudge her backwards. She sits back on the bed.

Still standing, Chloe’s tongue traces the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are on Max’s mouth, flicking over her bare chest to her jeans.

“Dry clothes,” she repeats. “We need to get you warmed up.”

She doesn’t put her hands anywhere she shouldn’t while she kneels to help Max ease the damp denim down over her thighs. Max has goosebumps that feel permanent, even in the wake of accidental brushes of Chloe’s hands.

“Thanks,” Max whispers when Chloe hands her a tank top, then a thin sweatshirt from her closet. She can feel the shyness rising again as she hooks her thumbs into her underwear and takes them off, but Chloe just kneels slightly to the side of her feet and stares at the shadows on the floor. Once Max gets the shorts on Chloe looks back towards her, like she was waiting for permission.

It feels too tender, suddenly. Like Chloe should be pushing the matter, dragging her eyes over Max’s skin, selfish the way she is during the day. But it’s sweet, Chloe moving her hand to Max’s ankle and rubbing gently over the bone there.

Her brow furrows, a smile twisting her lips. “You’ve got sand all over your feet,” Chloe snickers.

“Yeah,” Max sighs. The feeling building in her chest is bright and she’s so tired, so tired of running away from it. “A side effect of saving the day, I guess.”

Chloe climbs up onto the bed, ruffling Max’s hair as she passes. Oh, god. Max doesn’t want to think about her hair right now. It feels stiff against her neck, full of saltwater and debris.

“Well, even heroes need sleep,” Chloe says. She flops back, tilted so she’s just far enough into Max’s half of the bed that it’s an invitation. “You’ve had a long week, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sleep for the next two days straight.”

“That sounds good.” Max swings her legs back up onto the bed, looks down at Chloe, sprawled all over Max’s bed like she belongs there. She probably does.

Max eases down onto her side, lets one knee lay on top of Chloe’s. She reaches out slowly and drapes her arm over Chloe’s side. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath until Chloe moves closer. She exhales slowly, breath easing out the way Chloe eases into her space, taller and leaner and tucking Max’s head under her chin.

She smells like cigarettes and sweat and the body spray Max tossed at her when she complained about not having time to shower nearly twelve hours ago.

Max falls asleep in minutes.

She wakes up later when it’s still dark, jolting hard out of another nightmare. Chloe’s pinning her to the bed, hands to shoulders, talking her down through gritted teeth and she has to focus on something other than her heart bursting out of her chest.

“-well Academy,” Chloe whispers, her hands gentling once Max stops thrashing. She brings her mouth close to Max’s ear. “It’s Saturday and you’re in Arcadia, shit, Max, this is your room.”

“I know,” Max says. Her voice sounds as wrecked as she feels. She brings her hands up, slipping them past Chloe’s arms to touch her face. “I know.”

She slides her hands through Chloe’s hair, pushing her hat off and pulling her into another kiss. Her breath tastes like sleep and Max focuses on that, focuses on the way Chloe leans into her and matches her force.

“Max,” Chloe murmurs, tilting her head to bite at the underside of Max’s jaw, the line of her neck. “You’ve got some messed up comfort instincts here.” But she doesn't stop. She puts her mouth to Max's pulse until Max’s legs tighten around her hips and she can’t stand another moment without pulling Chloe’s face back to hers.

And now, at what the clock tells Max is five fifteen in the morning, when the sun is slowly lighting her room up in pinks and oranges, Chloe doesn’t hesitate. Her hands are hot under Max’s shirt and she drags her nails between Max’s shoulderblades just to make her shiver and pull closer. It feels more the way Max was expecting this time around, this Saturday morning boldness to contrast their weekday fumblings.

She has a moment, a moment where Chloe is kissing her stomach and pulling at the neat bow she tied in the laces of her shorts, where she wonders if this is how Rachel Amber felt.

The chill passes quickly in the wake of Chloe slipping her hand in between Max’s legs, bent over her and just watching her face as her fingers slide home. Her teeth are sunk into her lip and Max leans up to catch her mouth again, fumbling to cradle the back of Chloe’s neck and breathe at the same time. She can’t focus on being gentle with Chloe thrusting slow inside her, her other hand stroking Max's side just under where her ribs end and handling her like she’s going to snap in two.

It’s so quiet in her room, just Chloe’s breathing and her breathing and outside her window she can hear the birds waking up.

Chloe kisses her throat, and Max shuts her eyes tight, feels like the world is shaking apart for real this time, barometric pressure vibrating under her skin and through her legs. She’s so tired it hurts and Chloe holds her tighter when she moans.

“It’s okay,” Chloe tells her. Max wants to laugh--it’s not sexy, it’s not romantic, but it’s a truth that burns up through her as Chloe shifts her angle and speed and bites at her collarbone. “We’re alive.”

Max grabs harder at Chloe’s shoulders, her fingernails digging in when it’s too much. She comes with a soft noise muffled in Chloe’s sweatshirt, the brightness in her chest blown wide for a moment before it dims again, letting her down easy as Chloe does, kissing at the corner of her mouth with a stupid smile. Her back relaxes; Max is suddenly conscious of how tight her legs were wrapped around Chloe’s once they go limp.  

“Jesus,” Max whispers, and for a stupid moment she’s afraid to look again, afraid of what she’ll see. But when she opens her eyes, it’s just Chloe. It’s just her best friend, albeit taller and tougher and with less hair on her head. Despite the stupid throbbing feeling in her chest--it’s just Chloe.

And Chloe’s eyes are bright, her hands gentle, brushing Max’s away when she reaches for the button on Chloe’s jeans. The sun is rising outside, and Max feels wiped out again, but cleaner. Better.

“Go back to sleep,” Chloe says. “There’s time for that later."

 


End file.
